Comment by krapp

12 years ago

For what, the magical service that can't compromised by the NSA if it wants? At least Google has more resources to throw at the problem than a lot of other companies -- but really you can't trust anyone.

3 comments

krapp

jcromartie 12 years ago

> you can't trust anyone

That's become quite apparent. I just wonder if there's any solution, or if it's a mathematical certainty that communications are insecure.

generj 12 years ago
Doesn't that hold true for anything not using quantum encryption?
To fully secure in communications, you need to take advantage of weird quantum phenomenon like radioactive decay, and even then you are betting that we won't come up with a theoretical framework capable of predicting quantum phenomenon.
- krapp 12 years ago
  
  You might not have to be able to predict quantum phenomena. IIRC, one of the issues they had with the "quantum internet" thing they built in New Mexico[1] was having to downgrade what should have been a perfectly secure connection to an insecure classical one because it's impossible to route an quantum entangled signal.
  Not that this is necessarily a weakness of quantum encryption, so much as a suggestion that any system can't be perfectly secure. Maybe the chips have a backdoor. Maybe a random number generator is biased. Maybe any number of things up to and including maybe you get hit with a five dollar wrench over the head until you give up your password. What I fear is that while the math may be secure, the system itself can't be secured. The web was never built on the premise that security would matter, was it? Or at the very least that the adversary wouldn't be ones' own government. What can you do other than fabricate your own chips, build your own compiler, compile your own os, write your own network protocol and host a darknet (with similar self-constructed machines) out in the woods somewhere using a one-time pad for encryption? Even that's not enough.
  [1]http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2418657,00.asp